Echo City by Tim Lebbon Read Free Book Online

we’re looking to, isn’t it?”
    “And the Baker’s going to help us get there,” Gorham said. “So what better place to hide than the past?”
    He lifted the trapdoor himself and started down the narrow wooden staircase. There were several metal torches fixed to the wall, and he took one and lit its wick with the flints supplied. He shook it and listened to the thick slosh of oil. It sounded full. As ever, Nadielle seemed prepared.
    Malia descended behind him, picking up her own torch, and their journey down to the Baker’s laboratory began. The wooden staircase ended in a short, narrow corridor, at the end of which was a metal door, bolted shut. Gorham twisted four bolts in a specific sequence and heard tumblers turning. He pulled, and the door squealed as it came away from the frame. A breath of air sighed out from beyond, carrying with it strange smells and the hint of faraway voices. They might have been phantoms or the whispered communication of the Baker’s guards. Whichever, he and Malia would meet them soon.
    Beyond the corridor was a slightly sloping cave. It had once been a field of grapevines, and some of the thicker stems were still visible protruding above the dust. Perhaps the old fields had been ruined by overuse or poisoned by some long-ago cataclysm. In places there were huge, thick columns supporting the roof, gnarled and knotted with the twisted metal and cemented stone used to build up from the land below. There were footprints here and there, and, with no breeze to shift dust, they could have been recent or ancient. Some of them were his own from previous visits. It disturbed Gorham that he could not tell which were which.
    He and Malia walked across the underground plain, their torches setting shadows dancing in the distance.
    With a hiss, the first of the Baker’s chopped came in. It drifted low, trailing several long tendrils in the dust as though drawing energy from the ground. Gorham had seen this one before and thought it might once have been a woman, but now it was something else. Six arms, four thick legs, and two sets of light membranous wings made it unique, just as all of theBaker’s creations were unique. It dribbled something from its wide mouth as it hovered, and its obsidian eyes flickered this way and that—perhaps blind, or maybe possessed of a sight Gorham did not understand.
    “Gorham and Malia,” Gorham said. His voice sounded unnaturally loud, echoing into the dark distance.
    The thing circled them, wings beating so fast that they were almost invisible. They were virtually silent, though their downdraft whisked up a cloud of fine dust that soon dimmed the effect of the torches. One set of arms reached forward—the hands were horribly human, fingernails blackened and sharp—and it came in quickly to touch their faces. Gorham was prepared, but he heard Malia gasp in shock behind him.
    “It’s fine,” he said quietly. Her hand reached gently for his shoulder, seeking contact.
    The thing flew away, and within heartbeats it was lost to view.
    “I can never get used to this,” Malia said.
    “She’s got a lot to guard against. A lot to be afraid of.”
    “With what she can do, I can’t imagine her being afraid of anything.”
    “You’d be surprised.” Gorham walked on, aiming for the far end of the field.
    They passed through another door and started their descent through a maze of caverns and tunnels that confused him every time. They waited in the third cavern for what they knew would come, and the chopped man emerged from a crack in the wall within moments of their arrival. He was short and exceedingly thin, his head half the size of a normal man’s, and his naked skin was constantly slick from some strange secretion. He moved with a disconcerting grace—almost dancing, like the troupes that performed on the streets of Mino Mont—and Gorham wondered how flexible his bones would be.
    “My name’s Gorham,” he said. The small man glanced back, blinked